Carl Hovland
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Carl Iver Hovland (June 12, 1912 – April 16, 1961) was a
psychologist A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior. Their work often involves the experimentation, observation, and explanation, interpretatio ...
working primarily at
Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...
and for the
US Army The United States Army (USA) is the primary land service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution.Article II, section 2, clause 1 of the United Stat ...
during
World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
who studied
attitude Attitude or Attitude may refer to: Philosophy and psychology * Attitude (psychology), a disposition or state of mind ** Attitude change * Propositional attitude, a mental state held towards a proposition Science and technology * Orientation ...
change and
persuasion Persuasion or persuasion arts is an umbrella term for influence. Persuasion can influence a person's beliefs, attitudes, intentions, motivations, or behaviours. Persuasion is studied in many disciplines. Rhetoric studies modes of persuasi ...
. He first reported the
sleeper effect The sleeper effect is a psychological phenomenon that relates to persuasion. It is a delayed increase in the effect of a message that is accompanied by a discounting cue, typically being some negative connotation or lack of credibility in the me ...
after studying the effects of the
Frank Capra Frank Russell Capra (born Francesco Rosario Capra; May 18, 1897 – September 3, 1991) was an Italian-American film director, producer, and screenwriter who was the creative force behind Frank Capra filmography#Films that won Academy Award ...
propaganda film A propaganda film is a film that involves some form of propaganda. Propaganda films spread and promote certain ideas that are usually religious, political, or cultural in nature. A propaganda film is made with the intent that the viewer will ad ...
''
Why We Fight ''Why We Fight'' is a series of seven propaganda films produced by the US Department of War from 1942 to 1945, during World War II. It was originally written for American soldiers to help them understand why the United States was involved in the ...
'' on soldiers in the Army. In later studies on this subject, Hovland collaborated with
Irving Janis Irving Lester Janis (May 26, 1918 – November 15, 1990) was an American research psychologist at Yale University and a professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley most famous for his theory of "groupthink", which described the ...
who would later become famous for his theory of
groupthink Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome. Cohesiveness, or the desire for cohesivenes ...
. Hovland also developed social judgment theory of
attitude Attitude or Attitude may refer to: Philosophy and psychology * Attitude (psychology), a disposition or state of mind ** Attitude change * Propositional attitude, a mental state held towards a proposition Science and technology * Orientation ...
change. Carl Hovland thought that the ability of someone to resist persuasion by a certain group depended on your degree of belonging to the group.


Biography

Hovland was born in Chicago on June 12, 1912. He originally intended to pursue a career in music until college, when he discovered psychology. Before this discovery, during his high school years at Luther Institute in Chicago, he would meet a fellow piano student, Gertrude Raddatz. He would later come to marry her in 1938. During Hovland’s initial pursuit of music, he would come to neglect his other classes that did not interest him as much, such as sports. Instead, an interest was toward music and science bloomed as Hovland became an excellent pianist. His love for the two merged with his promotion of his interests through a small shop he developed. Carl Hovland was recruited by Samuel Stouffer, a sociologist on leave from the University of Chicago, to contribute to their collaborative research efforts. Hovland had the responsibility of leading a team of fifteen researchers.Aronson, Elliot, Timothy D. Wilson, and Robin M. Akert. ''Social Psychology''. Upper Saddle River, N.J: Pearson Education, 2010. Hovland was involved in a study of the conditions under which people are most likely to change their attitudes in response to persuasive messages. The Yale Group's work was first described in Hovland's book ''Communication and Persuasion'', published in 1953. With his life’s end approaching due to his cancer, his major interests in his last few years of life shifted from his verbal concept research to concept-formation. He would approach this idea with computer simulations G3of human thought process In his lifetime, Hovland was a member of the
American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS) is an American scholarly organization and learned society founded in 1743 in Philadelphia that promotes knowledge in the humanities and natural sciences through research, professional meetings, publicat ...
, the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...
, and the
National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...
.


Contributions

Psychological research was Hovland's intellectual joy. Especially in his early career, his investigations covered many topics. His papers in psychological journals included a study of test reliability, a major review of the literature on apparent movement, as well as his four classical papers on conditioned generalization from his doctoral dissertation. Hovland began to emphasize micro-level analysis of propaganda and its effects. Hovland's army experiments were the beginnings of that micro-level analysis of an individual. Hovland's "core conceptual variable was attitude". Hovland believed that if he was able to recognize the attitude an individual has towards a trigger, he would be able to predict the behavior and actions of an individual over time. However, there were many studies that argued the contrary and showed that "an attitude toward a person or object does not predict or explain an individual's overt behavior regarding that person or object". This revelation of low correlation did not necessarily render findings useless but instead led to further research on how under certain circumstances it was possible to change a person's behavior via their attitudes. While Hovland focused on an individual rather than a group level, he began to take into consideration interpersonal communication in the form of persuasion. Specifically, Hovland was responsible for carrying out a series of studies that contributed to the "cumulative understanding of persuasion behavior that has never since been matched or even rivaled". To test and apply his theorization Hovland worked proposed the SMCR model. The SMCR model consists of four components—source variables, message variables, channel variables, and receiver variables. By manipulating each of these variables, Hovland was able to advance his "message-learning approach to attitude change". There were problems with his particular approach, however, in that by focusing on a single dimension of the SMCR model, Hovland was unable to do more than isolate a factor rather than study the synergy between the different variables.


Death

Hovland died on April 16, 1961. When Hovland learned that he had cancer, he continued to work with his Yale doctoral students and conduct persuasion experiments. Finally, when he could work no more, he left his office in the Psychology Department, went to his home in New Haven, drew a bathtub full of water, and drowned himself.Schramm, in Rogers, Everett M. ''History Of Communication Study: A Biographical Approach''. 39:383.


Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hovland, Carl 1912 births 1961 suicides 20th-century American psychologists American social psychologists Suicides by drowning in the United States Yale Sterling Professors Suicides in Connecticut 1961 deaths United States Army personnel of World War II Members of the American Philosophical Society Yale University alumni APA Distinguished Scientific Award for an Early Career Contribution to Psychology recipients